The town of Keswick lies on the shores of a large puddle called Derwentwater in the rain-sodden county of Cumbria. It is the furthest north of a series of puddles collectively known as the Puddle District. The Cumbrian tourist board try to market them as lakes, but the following diagram illustrates their error.

Keswick attracted many ailing poets during the 19th century due to the romance of the puddle. Victorians thought it had great healing powers, especially if applied to hemorrhoids. The treatment of which was in its embryonic stage during this time and anything was worth a go. Victorians spent many hours crouching on the shore with their buttocks immersed in the water, although some of them contracted a condition known as the Derwentwater Shrink. Lord Byron suffered badly from this, although he still seemed to please the women. Eventually he travelled to Venice to immerse his backend in milder water, but before leaving he penned the following lines:

There crouched the wise and wondrous by thee
In sweetly dipping our arses did we
Rid ourselves of those blighted sores
Thank you for your mooning shores

The history of the area goes back much further than Byron, however, as the monoliths of Castlerigg Stone Circle testify. These are a bunch of old stones left lying around by a bored prehistoric man as a way to frustrate future generations who ponder on their deep significance. He left similar stones all over the country and donated them in his will to English Heritage, an organisation who specialise in any structure that doesn’t have a roof. Blighty top tip - when visiting English Heritage sites take a brolly.

Today Keswick is a major tourist town due to the fact that the coastline on the north west of England is rubbish. And to this day you can sometimes catch a glimpse of ‘the mooning shore’, especially late on Friday or Saturday after a night on the town.

Other things to see while in the area include the Honister Slate Mine where you can confront your claustrophobia and hope the lift doesn’t fail again, Cumberland Pencil Museum where you can wile away a few seconds if the weather gets really bad, and the various other large and moderate sized puddles that make up the Puddle District.

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